I kid you not, 80-90% of people resolve their low back pain in 3 months with OR without a therapist laying a finger on them. This is when most people with low back pain give me a look of disbelief (sometimes even more), but it’s something we see clinically. Of course, there are special cases as well as ways to speed up the process and prevent the pain from coming back. If you have neurological symptoms such as accompanying pain that shoots down your leg, that can last as long as 2 years before you experience any relief.

Pain is described by many as a hurtful experience related to tissue damage, but stopping at that would only explain a small aspect of this complex experience. Rather, it is better to think of pain as the ultimate output. It scrutinizes multiple inputs including but not limited to hurt/damage. We now understand that emotional state, memories of past experiences, context, body location, and cultural beliefs are also relevant inputs. The combination of these inputs is often required to create something deemed as pain and it is explained best by Melzack’s Neuromatrix Theory of Pain. His theory describes pain as being comprised of three domains.

After speaking to hundreds of clients in Mississauga about their training injuries over the past year, I realized that nearly everyone used cold application differently. A popular misconception is that you are reaping all the benefits from icing as long as you apply some form of it to any type of injury. Not only can incorrect application of ice prove to be ineffective, it may even do the opposite of what was intended and become damaging to the body. Yes, there are some inherent physical differences in people that call for more or less cold application. Apart from that research has presented ideal parameters including temperature, duration, method, and purpose that everyone should be aware.

As I type this article, I become conscious of how I position my wrists due to the topic at hand (pun definitely intended). Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is relevant to anyone who uses a keyboard a lot, plays a musical instrument, or uses small tools on a daily basis repeatedly. Around 10% of people are either dealing with some form of CTS or are in the process of developing it in North America.

Let’s face it, many of us suffer from shin splints and have no idea what to do with it. Running is perfectly fine until a dull shin pain slowly creeps in on us and boom, it’s here to stay until further notice. Whether you consult a fitness trainer or search online for treatment options you will often be told to rest when symptoms are bad, and you should. My problem with rest is it doesn’t address the cause of injury.

Let’s have a little lesson about human anatomy when it comes to mobility and stability. Which joint in the human body do you think can operate and move in the most directions using the most range of motion possible? If you guessed the hip, then you are on the right track, but not quite there. As you will find out from Mississauga personal training, the shoulder joint, also known as the glenohumeral joint offers the body the most mobility.

Whiplash was the common term back in the day for any type of injury of the neck involving its acceleration, followed immediately by deceleration. Of course, this term was often associated with malingering (faking an illness to escape work) due to the difficulty of really quantifying the extent of the injury for most cases. The term was later changed to Whiplash Associated Disorders (WADs) when studies emerged that proved the prevalence of WADs was large, regardless of whether each case could be picked up by scans such as MRI and X-ray or not. Other signs and symptoms that motor vehicle accident patients experienced, like cervicogenic headaches which are headaches that start from the neck and move to the head, are beginning to be used more commonly now to help diagnose WADs. Speak to a personal trainer in Mississauga for more details about how to adjust your head rest.

We can all agree that the average Canadian diet consists of 3 meals a day with a bunch of snacks in between. We also know for the most part that the government of Canada provides guidelines as to what the healthiest portions of each food group should be for a meal, including meats, veggies/fruits, dairy products, and grains. And I’m pretty sure everyone has heard the saying that you should never skip breakfast because it is the most important meal of the day. Eating, eating, and more eating is all I’ve purposefully been talking about so far. People are generally aware of what to eat to improve their health, but are either never concerned with or are just confused about when and how frequently they should eat. We never hear about fasting as part of our “diet”, not in mainstream media at least. Of course there are many reasons as to why this may be, but it all stems from the fact we are programmed to believe we need to constantly eat food in order to maintain our health. I’m here to explain why that’s not always the case.

When observing an object, you can somewhat judge what its function is by analyzing certain features and characteristics about it. A table has four stationary legs with a flat top which suggests that it is meant to stay in place to support its top while allowing for room underneath. In a sense, we have somewhat described the essence of a table. To describe the essence of a human on the other hand is extremely difficult and is usually met with numerous opinions. But let’s try and describe a human the same way we just did with the table. A human is a living, organic mass with moveable limbs connected to joints that allow movement in many directions via muscular contractions. Based on this description, your essence is to move. However, we don’t realize this until we stop moving.